


We are to Resist and Repress

by lonerofthepack



Series: To Fall Next Upon Salem, and So Go On [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: And By God He Will Feed Percival, Gen, I Definitely Ship It, M/M, Maybe If I post it I'll return to being a productive member of society, Mrs. Colon Ships It, Newt's a Giver, The Great Graves Coffee Wager of 1927, They've Been Dating For Months Percival Doesn't Know, This is unrepentant fluff y'all, lol, the aurors ship it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22718161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: The Healers had sent a memo so adamant that Mrs. Colon had tacked it to the wall beside her desk: the Director was to limit himself to absolutely no more than two mugs of the stuff, and never after four in the afternoon.The clock ticked pointedly toward half-seven. Percival Graves grumbled, and gulped down another swallow.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: To Fall Next Upon Salem, and So Go On [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1340785
Comments: 8
Kudos: 177





	We are to Resist and Repress

"Mercy Lewis," the Director swore, strangled around a mouthful of liquid, hastily choked down. Fifteen minutes, that cup had been sitting at his side untouched — practically a record.

Newt sighed down into the scritch of his pen over one of the endless reports that had been shoved into his hands.

(He didn't think about the tick of spelled chalk over a small board somewhere in the President's office; his policy on worrying certainly extended to the minutiae of a year-long wager with a pack of aurors. And the Director's prowess as a Legilimens was not inconsiderable. Not so free-wheeling as Queenie Goldstein's perhaps, but…)

At least it _was_ a pen, not one of the quills the Ministry had always insisted on.

(No sense in showing his hand quite so early in the game.)

So he scribbled full another line of the form, and didn't let himself look like he was paying any attention at all to the man across the room, who was treating his mug to a properly filthy look. 

"Mr. Scamander, if you're going to ruin a cup of coffee, you should at least have the decency to drink it yourself."

"Well, Mr. Graves, if you're going to, ah, skip meals, I rather think you can tolerate coffee with a splash of milk. Particularly—" he said in the almost-singsong tone that had never failed to rile Theseus past rational thought. Because the Director had buried any number of smiles into a mug at the right sort of well-timed sass, and he went absolutely stone-faced at any voiced declaration of worry by his various cohort. 

Wrapping the, er, metaphorical pill of care in a cold-cut of cheerful insolence was perhaps one of the more conceptually abstract measures Newt had taken to convince, er, someone to consume desperately needed calories, but far from the least pleasant.

"— when _that_ is no less than your fourth cup today." 

The Healers had sent a memo so adamant that Mrs. Colon had tacked it to the wall beside her desk: the Director was to limit himself to absolutely no more than two mugs of the stuff, and never after four in the afternoon.

The clock ticked pointedly toward half-seven.

"It isn't the milk I take offense to," Percival Graves grumbled back, after a weighty pause to consider, and gulped down another shallow swallow, visibly wincing at the rather sweet and very light and doubtless repulsive to I-Don't-Drink-It-For-The- _Taste_ -But- _Coffee_ -Should-Taste-Like- _Coffee_ Graves… but coffee regardless, and illicit coffee at that.

("Just this once, dear," Mrs. Colon had remarked when Newt arrived just before quitting time with two steaming mugs in hand, settling her shawl around her shoulders and tucking on her hat in preparation for going home to a quiet night. "But you'll see that he eats something before you go, won't you? He's always so much more cheerful when you're in town, Mr. Scamander."

"Oh, well— that's, er, he seems to like explosions, ha," he'd muttered in reply, clutching the mugs and ducking a smile at her. "Have a good night, Mrs. Colon."

"You too, dear. Have a lovely dinner.")

He set aside the report, levered himself out of the hideous chair Percival kept for his hapless visitors— and plucked up his own untouched mug. It was the dangerous sort of black that resembled tar far more than any sort of beverage one should drink.

He was two-and-a-half strides away when Graves' gaze snapped up, wary.

(Graves' office was a bizarre sort of shape, managing to be simultaneously cluttered and empty. It was long, and somewhat unreasonably deep, producing a space more fit for long-tabled meetings than the squat, severe desk that lurked across from the door like a chained tyger. Five strides to reach the desk, another two to the cabinets behind the desk— half of one stride, right now; the mountains of files and paper that had stacked against those golden-glow glass fronts had been winnowed down to mere foothills in the months Newt's been making pilgrimages to Graves' office with his own offerings of smudged paperwork.)

Last month it had been only four strides until he felt that gaze, so. Progress.

"If you'd like," he murmured, and put the mug forward enough to show unadulterated black coffee.

The Director lifted an eyebrow, and slowly took the coffee, pushing the other forward ( _away_ ) with the same movement. Almost in offer, though the Director knew Newt's distaste for the stuff. He regarded Newt with a shrewd expression, and took a pointed sip. "In my experience, Mr. Scamander, typically one says what they'd like _before_ offering the bribe. What is it you're after?"

"Err, dinner. When you've finished that."

He earned half a second of suspicious squint over the rim of the mug, before the Director's face smoothed, still and wary, and the mug lowered back to the desktop.

_Gently, Scamander. Don't muck it up now._

"My, um. The occamy hatchlings are at that age, you know--er, when everything Mum eats is fair game. So meals are, ah, best taken out of sight and scent range for the time being."

Not a falsehood, and no whiff of a slow and careful pursuit; he watched the stiffness fade into an acknowledging bob of Mr. Graves' chin, with satisfaction curling in his belly and peeped hopefully through his beast-mussed hair. 

(Graves hadn't learned to treat that expression with suspicion yet, not the way the Scamander clan or Tina Goldstein had. Newt watched it soften the hesitation out of the lines in his face, quirked his lips in additional encouragement when Graves let go of the cup to test the scrape of his own jaw across his palm.)

And was rewarded.

"Well, I suppose. What are your thoughts on Italian fare?"


End file.
